I retired in May 2018 after completing 44 years as a teacher, 16 years in the public school system and 28 years in the teacher education program at Maryville College. The 28 years at Maryville College resulted in some of the most productive years of my life. If I had told someone that my goals for the teacher education program at Maryville College would be to achieve state, regional, national, and international recognition, few people would have believed that these goals were anything more than impossible dreams. Consequently, they were not shared with most people. Yet, these goals were achieved through the hard work of my colleagues and students in the teacher education program.
I have never thought that these goals demonstrated arrogance on my part. However, if it was arrogance, then the good Lord took care of that attitude between May 2018 and December 2019. We moved to Tyler, Texas after my retirement. I had been fighting Parkinson’s since 2001, and it began taking its toll on me physically. By fall 2018, I was experiencing weakness throughout my body, and I began to have hallucinations. By Christmas 2018, I did not have the physical strength to drive the few hours from Tyler to the home of my daughter, Jennifer.
By spring 2019, I began losing the ability to walk, to stand up from a sitting position, to hold utensils while eating, and to write, because I could not hold a pencil. This became very scary time for me, and it tested my faith to its limit. I assumed this was the end result of Parkinson’s. I went to Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas to see a neurologist, Dr. Olga Wiln. She quickly determined that my physical problems were not the result of Parkinson’s, but that I had experienced a stroke or damage to my spinal cord. I entered the hospital the same evening, and by noon the next day it was determined that the spinal cord in my neck was damaged due to compression. While the surgery itself would not be complicated, the healing process would be. It would take six months to one year of intense physical therapy to see improvement of these physical problems.
This experience is giving me a new understanding of humility. For the last three months I have had to have help to complete any body functions. I have learned that I have to depend on others to live each day. The number of degrees behind one’s name no longer matter. The most important people in my life each day receive very little pay for the essential work they do each day. Many of them have become a daily blessing in my life each day. Striving to be in the center of God’s is no longer obvious. My daily goals have now become being able to stand without help for 10 minutes or to take three steps without falling. I have asked this question many times during the past three months, “Why am I here?” At times, it has become a difficult question to answer. I know one thing for sure: I have become eternally grateful to Jennifer and her husband Jeffrey, Savannah, and the other grandchildren. I am grateful for the support of faculty and the students at Maryville College and their willingness to follow me.
However, I want to mention two individuals. Dr. Charles Redmond was pastor of First Baptist Church in Lenoir City, Tennessee during the 1970s, and from there he went to First Baptist Sulfur Springs, Texas. He recommended me for a position in Greenville, Texas. He then went to First Baptist Pasadena, Texas. Jennifer and I went to see him this past summer, and he actually remembered me. When I shared my health issues with him, he asked, “May I pray for you?” He got up, walked across a very large room, got on his knees at my feet, took my hands and prayed a prayer that seemed to touch the very throne of God.
The second person is a nurse supervisor at Methodist Hospital. I will leave the hospital on December 20 after four weeks of intense daily physical therapy. She is a large African-American woman who always knows what is going on. She came into my room yesterday and said she had been watching me and was impressed by my progress and attitude. Then she laid her hands on my head and began to pray. She prayed that God would give me complete healing.
This old man of 71 years has learned many valuable lessons. These people and many others have become new blessings in my life.
In my last Ethics class during January Term 2018, we reached an impasse on how to respond, or if we should respond, to some very evil situations. My question was, “Why are you here?”
In my situation over the past year, I’ve asked myself over a hundred times, “Why am I here?” I have some clarity, but I am still working on the complete answer. The good Lord knows, and I am learning to trust him anew, and need to realize that I am still a student and need to learn some new things.
Bless you my children…
tls
Dr. Terry L. Simpson
Director of Teacher Education, Emeritus
Maryville College
